A day at the Tax Authorities office

It’s 8:05 and the time is ticking. My train should have been here by now, but I am still waiting. Every day I travel the same route to my internship at the Belastingdienst (Tax Authorities). Ofcourse by train, like most students. And surprisingly (not! Haha), the train is delayed, but luckily, I won’t be too late at the office.  While reading this, many of you probably are thinking, why is a communication student doing an internship at the Tax Authorities office? Communication is a very creative field, and the Tax Authorities.. well.. it is not. It is all about rules, rules, and people describe it as a cold organization that only cares about money. However, every organization needs communication. My job here is to work on a digital platform for employees. I am doing research to what makes online communities (internal) successful, and what is the best way to market this under the employees. As soon as I get to the office, I drink my tea. We get free coffee and tea here from a really good machine, so of course I can’t let that one go! While drinking my cup, the team gets together to talk about planning of the day. Today around 15:00 is the monthly team-meeting. In this meeting, everyone gets a chance to speak about their progress, their complaints, new ideas, and the chairman will speak about the new tasks and projects that are coming up. I must book the room for today, even though half of the participants will enter via Zoom, we still need to book a separate meeting room. I continue my day after that, with writing out two interviews I did yesterday. These were over the phone, with two employees of this organization. It was a nice interview that gave me a lot of insight on how they perceive online communities and what their expectations are. I hope, I framed their view in the best way possible. So, when I leave here, my co-workers can work on making the most successful community. Not to just be the best, but to be useful for the employees and give them a safe space. Next, I am reviewing some event invites. I am doing this with another co-worker, who is a communication science postgraduate. Together we need to make sure that the invite is appealing enough, that the design looks good. That people will feel that they can’t miss this event, and most importantly, that they share this with others. I am a flexible worker, but I am a very independent person which makes it hard to work collaborate. But, even though we had different opinions on a few details of the invite, we managed to agree and get a good result. Today, we have a team outing after the meeting. They do this occasionally, and today we are going out to eat. We are having dinner with all the co-workers. I am very excited for this! While sipping another coffee, I am finishing off the last tasks for the day before heading to dinner and then going back home.Preparing for tomorrow, another office day.